Proposals of no payment no refund scheme for five export oriented industries should be revived: Waseem Vohra

Karachi, May 04, 2015 (PPI-OT): The proposals of no payment no refund scheme for the five export oriented industries should be revived. This was stated by Waseem Vohra, Vice President FPCCI in a meeting of the working group of FPCCI federal budget 2015-16. The meeting was also attended by the representatives of the concerned associations of five export oriented industries viz Waseem Vohra, Zubair Tufail, Javed Bilwani, Dr. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, Dr. Shehzad Arshad, Senator Haseeb Khan, Mazhar Ali Nasir, Arshad Shehzad, Zahid Nazir, Abdul Hafeez Muhammad, Atif Ashraf, Muzamil Hussain, Gulzar Firoz.

While discussion on the proposals of concerned member bodies of FPCCI, they said that export of the textile has already been declined due to higher cost of doing business and inordinate delay in payment of sales tax refund, D/L, T/L, rebate etc. consequently, the exporters are suffering liquidity problem. They expressed their deep concern over increasing export of our international competitors whereas the export of Pakistan has been decreasing. They further said that if this declining trend is continued the government would not be able to achieve the export target US $ 26 billion as emphasized in the new textile policy.

They apprehended that if sales tax @ 5% is levied on the zero rated sector i.e. textile, leather, carpet, sports goods and surgical instruments would be the last nail in coffin as it would detrimental to the export sector of the country pushing them to close their export oriented industries. Despite the fact that Pakistan has the status of GSP plus of EU, the value added textile industry in the country has already been closed down about 40% due to which un-employment has been increased on one hand and the export declined on the other hand, they added.

They urged the government that the existing sales tax rate 2 percent should be abolished rather the move of FBR to levy of sales tax at uniform rate of 5% on zero rated export industries in the forth coming budget would not be a wise decision. They concluded that in these state of affairs continued to prevail the government target of 7% GDP growth would not be achieved.

The business community unanimously suggested that the government should adopted zero rated policy for the above mentioned five export based sectors and there should be NO PAYMENT NO REFUND policy.